I love those guys and gals over at the Crimson Consulting group in SF. I’ve met several of their Web Strategy team such as Karen O’Brien and James Lim at events, and at meetings. They’re the real deal when it comes to Web Strategy practice.

Glenn Gow, the founder writes a great piece on who should own and drive the strategy and leadership of Enterprise 2.0 within a corporation. It’s often thought that IT should be driving the strategy, but I’ve seen too many projects run by IT where the technology is selected in order to appease the systems requirements but not those of the business. Mistake.

Glenn’s thoughts on the topic:

“Yes, knowledge sharing inside companies is important and valuable, but who buys what and why is what makes the company survive, thrive or die. THIS is where the focus of enterprises should be, because THE MARKET is where the greatest impact will occur.

Jeremiah is right to point out that IT plays a role, and they do not usually play the role of the innovator. They have standards to keep track of, and security to worry about. Enterprise 2.0 will create a nightmare (in their eyes) of maverick systems that operate outside of their control. E2.0 will scare them. They will want to slow it down, and they are likely to succeed within the firewall, where they should exercise significant control.”

With the barriers being so low for employees to adopt collaboration or social networks within a few clicks (see this list of tools), users can quickly move off the intranet and build their own version without the aid of IT. Read this White Paper, documenting the importance of IT needing to catch up to the business (PDF).

Usually, thought leadership within an organization will start and be owned with the Marketing team, who can then drive ownership, business process, and strategy.

I’d also like to suggested one other group that could drive the program, a real internal web team. Many enterprises are starting to seperate the web team out from Marketing or IT, realizing it’s a unique department as all corporations are now media companies (they just don’t’ know it yet). The need to create authentic media (not hindered by the Marcom police) are needed both externally and internally. So keep an eye out for that driver. I held the Intranet Management role at my last four companies, I know the struggles and rewards.

[The sophisticated company will have a dedicated web team outside of Marketing or IT, as the web impacts all areas of the company from prospects, customers, competitors, products, partners, and employees]

This report from the Internet Strategy Forum shows where the ownership is in a company, right now it’s shifting from IT to Marketing, I predict it will evolve into a new stand alone group.

Web Strategist Lee Aase provides some excellent options and points for considerations in Social Networking Options for Organizations.

If you’re focused in on this topic, I’ve been invited to attend the Office 2.0 conference in SF in September 5-7th, I hope to see you there. Oh yeah, they are giving away an iPhone to all attendees (except Media, damn).

There’s a list of folks who are looking to hire a Web Strategist, see this list.